The present invention relates generally to an apparatus for hanging articles or items. In particular, the present invention relates to an apparatus having multiple movable arms for hanging sundry articles including, without limitation, laundry items.
Washing laundry is an unavoidable task. In many instances, such as where shrinkage and/or article damage would not be an issue, wet clothing may be placed directly into a dryer for drying. However, for items susceptible to shrinkage or damage that may be caused by a dryer, the clothing must be air dried instead. Current clothing drying racks assume a variety of forms, most of which rest on the floor. Some are too small to accept large items or articles of clothing. Others are bulky, unsightly and awkward and need to be set up substantially in the middle of a room where they interfere with passage through the room. In any event, such devices do not have enough rungs to hang an entire load of laundry and the lower rungs of such devices cannot be used because the wet clothing touches the floor. Moreover, conventional drying racks are not ruggedly made and often frequently lose parts as a result of continual opening and closing of the devices.
In contrast to conventional laundry drying racks of the types thus far described, apparatus for hanging items or articles of all kinds have been devised that have a plurality of radially extending supports for suspending laundry and other items. Examples of such apparatus are found in U.S. Pat. Nos. 6,568,546 and 5,535,896. In each of these documents there is disclosed a generally vertically-oriented central support member in the form of a rod or tube defining a generally vertical axis. Several item hanging members or arms extend radially from the central support member and are adapted to pivot within limited or enabling arcs surrounding the central support member.
An advantage of such apparatus is that they enable a number of items to be suspended from the arms in a relatively compact volume or space. A disadvantage of such apparatus is that their arms are fixed in size and pivotable movement is limited which limits the number and sizes of items that they can carry. Furthermore, in the case of laundry drying racks, they are limited in their ability to enable effective drying of large numbers of relatively small laundry items such as socks and the like.
Thus, there is still a need for an article suspension apparatus capable of supporting larger numbers and sizes of articles than presently available apparatus. Such needed apparatus must be of rugged construction and capable of effectively supporting items including wet laundry in a compact volume or space. Such a need is satisfied by the article suspension apparatus of the present invention.